Grave Daughter
by Nightmarish
Summary: There is grave dirt in her mouth and she cannot remember her name. 3rd in The Calling.
1. Grave Daughter

Disclaimer: I do not own BtVS or LotR

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**Grave Daughter**

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A drum beats in the dark.

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

These are the first things she knows – darkness and drumbeats – even before she knows she is a she, and that there is an opposite of dark. She knew other things, once, but her thoughts are slipping in and out of focus as the sound grows louder, welling up in her chest like the frenzy of war drums. War. She knew that, too.

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

It is the sound of her own heart beating in her chest. This realization brings with it the knowledge that she has lungs, too, and a need to breathe; but one gasping breath sucks in all the air there is and it is not enough. She tries to move, her limbs like disconnected parts wakening in the dark, but there is no space, no air, no light. She cannot remember what that is. She claws frantically at the walls confining her. Silky cloth tears beneath her ragged nails, and then there is wood, but it splinters easily in the face of her desperation. She understands herself to be lying down only when moist earth pours in around her, heavy and suffocating. She chokes –

– and falters. How easy would it be to slip back into the deep-dark and close her eyes?

_Thump-thump_.

Unseeing eyes snap open and a feeling she cannot name overtakes her. She presses up against the cold blanket of mud, flailing and kicking and fighting with everything she has. One hand breaks the surface and she surges upwards, exploding out of the tortured earth.

She coughs and splutters and inhales all at the same time, and staggers to her feet. Strength coils tensely under her skin, but there is a leaden ache in her soul and already this world is too harsh, too strange. The wind's voice echoes singsong in her ears, nonsense words she cannot comprehend. The swollen moon hangs like a beacon light over her head, clarifying nothing.

There is grave dirt in her mouth and she cannot remember her name.


	2. The Ground

She inspected her reflection in the bathroom mirror, scrutinizing every detail. She was clean and whole and very much as her patchy memory, confirmed by the photographs displayed in her bedroom and around the house, said she should look. She frowned, and so did the woman staring back at her. She could not shake the feeling that something was still missing.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Dawn hovered in the open doorway, her bright eyes full of worry.

It had been three days since she crawled out of her grave. She was not okay.

Her sister had been hovering all that time, unwilling to let her out of her sight, as though she might disappear the moment Dawn's back was turned. She couldn't really blame her. She didn't have the energy to feel anything other than apathetic at the moment. One would think that after a couple of months in the ground, she'd feel more rested.

_In the ground._

"Buffy?"

"Huh?" She looked up, realizing belatedly that Dawn had been calling her name. Now she was really starting to look concerned.

"I said, are you sure you're okay?"

She smiled. The woman in the mirror grimaced. "I'm just a little tired, you know?"

Dawn looked unsure, but nodded. "If you want to – to _talk_, I mean, you can tell me anything. Unless it's totally ickworthy." She pulled a face.

This time she smiled genuinely at her sister's attempt at levity, but it was gone in a matter of seconds. What was there to talk about? How could she ever put into words the simultaneity of her feelings: that she knew in her bones that she was here to fulfill a purpose, a calling, but at the same time, felt like she was never meant to rise from the ground? She imagined what Dawn's face would look like if she described to her the secret yearning deep inside her chest to slip down amongst the grave dirt and plant matter and curl up like a child returning to the womb. This world was full of _loud_ and _bright_ and it was almost more than she could bear.

She couldn't say any of that, of course. Dawnie, of all people, would never understand.

"You should probably go to bed," she said instead. "School night, right?"

"Yeah, okay." Dawn frowned and bit her lip. "You should get some rest, too."

"I will," she promised. "Goodnight."

Dawn hugged her forcefully and then pulled away too fast. "Love you, Buffy." With one last glance over her shoulder, she padded off down the hall to her bedroom.

_Your name is Buffy_, Buffy reminded her reflection for the hundredth time.


	3. The Kiss

**The Kiss**

_Somewhere between_ Once More, With Feeling_ and _Tabula Rasa.

"Where are you going?"

Buffy turned to find Willow watching her from the top of the staircase. Her face hurt from trying to smile reassuringly, so she tucked her hair behind her ear instead.

"Outside. I need some fresh air."

"To patrol?" Willow asked nervously, descending the stairs. "Are you sure you're – I mean, you don't –" She stopped, looking like she might start crying again. Buffy wanted to shake her.

What was unsaid hung heavy between them after the big reveal on music night.

Buffy shook her head. "Just outside. I'm feeling a little claustrophobic."

Willow winced guiltily, but Buffy hadn't said it to be mean.

In truth, Buffy thought she might scream if she didn't get out of the house. Inside her dead mother's house, where the walls felt like they were closing in on her and Willow's guilt hung thick and palpable in the air, and everyone tiptoed around her like she was a ticking time bomb, Buffy felt like she was slowly suffocating. Her senses were dulled, shrouded by drywall and concrete, and every fiber of her being ached to feel the moonlight on her skin and the cool grass beneath her feet.

She slipped past Willow, who silently fidgeted with barely suppressed agitation, and out into the night.

The ever-present pain in her chest seemed to both lessen and intensify as she swallowed her first deep breath. There was space to expand out here, but she could feel everything more sharply. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky. The night air was mild after a hot day. She inhaled the scent of warm, growing things and was calmer than before.

There was something missing inside of her. It wasn't the sense of _missing something_that she'd thought it was at first. It was the feeling that she was hollow, through and through. Skin and bones and dead air. Disconnected.

Being outside helped. Everything was interconnected in the natural world. Blood and water and dirt.

She kicked off her shoes and dug her toes into the grass. With each step she took, she became more grounded. She imagined herself spreading roots. She half-remembered, oddly, the story of Daphne, and tried to imagine actually becoming a tree. She'd have a great view for a change.

She laughed softly, and then stopped abruptly, surprised at herself.

"Been a long time since I heard you laugh, pet." A shadow detached itself from a tombstone and resolved itself into Spike, who looked equal parts pitiful and hopeful.

She realized, belatedly, that she had wandered all the way to Sunnydale Cemetery without trying. Muscle memory, and all that.

"Been looking for you," Spike continued.

Buffy knew this. She had been actively avoiding Spike since the big town sing-along. She'd been avoiding everyone, really, but mostly Spike. Spike, who impossibly, unexplainably, irrationally, made her feel a spark. They had kissed, and she wanted to kiss him again now. When she kissed Spike, she didn't feel hollow, but it felt like a betrayal.

"I can't do this," she said, distressed.

"Slayer – " He reached out to grab her bicep but she jerked away. She remembered suddenly that the reason Daphne became a tree in the first place was to escape the lustful grasp of Apollo. It didn't quite fit, but that didn't stop her from throwing Spike into the nearest tombstone.

She shook her roots and ran barefoot all the way home.

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><p><em>The chapter title is actually a reference to Klimt's famous painting by the same name. I read some speculation recently that the painting may actually be a slight reference to the ApolloDaphne myth. I wanted to bring tree imagery into this story, and I've loved that myth since I visited the Borghese gallery in Rome and saw their sculpture. So let's blame it all on Bernini, shall we?_


	4. Come Apart

_Dialogue borrowed from _Normal Again_. Also, my apologies for the terrible, cobbled together elvish attempts. You can infer the meaning from the context._

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><p>Things don't get easier.<p>

She's beginning to come to terms with being back. In the sense that she has accepted that she is not dead. Some days – _Spike-days – _she even feels a small thrum of life in her blood, but most of the time she's just _not-dead_.

She feels exhausted.

Everything is so much harder than it was – _before_. The world is still too bright and cold and she just doesn't _fit_ anymore. She tries, honest to god she does, but everything's fucked five ways from Tuesday and it all keeps coming back to the fact that she's not-dead. Giles left, Tara left, Xander left, Anya left, and Buffy's been reduced to hunting nerds and fucking Spike in mausoleums.

She regains consciousness in an alleyway with a hole in the sleeve of her jacket where the needle slid in, and things make even less sense than before.

* * *

><p>Dawn brings her tea and tries to heal invisible hurts with a soft voice and pleading eyes. She still doesn't understand.<p>

"I should be taller than you," Buffy whispers, but of course they're both sitting down and everything's twisted topsy-turvy anyways.

_"You don't have a sister, Buffy," Joyce tells her. / "But she belongs to us, doesn't she?"_

Buffy shakes her head, doesn't want to listen, can't stop listening.

"I'm not even there, am I?" Dawn stares at her in some kind of broken hearted horror, but Buffy is still so muzzy-headed and cold, and then Dawn's gone, and time is making no sense whatsoever.

"Are you all right?" Spike asks, and what kind of question is _that? _because she's so obviously not, hasn't been in months, not since they pulled her out. The question makes her angry and she wants to _stop_, tells him this needs to _stop_, she can't stand it when he looks at her like that, like he loves her, like she owes him something. She sends him away because she's still using him and they both know it, but he's too in love with her and she's too miserable to stop. So she sends him away.

* * *

><p>It gets worse, after that.<p>

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><p>Buffy's mind whimpers and cringes and curls in on itself as her body lays perfectly still, propped up against the pillows. Her eyes are empty. Her chest feels empty. Her head feels like it's going to explode, but her heart is as cold and broken in her chest as her dead lover's.<p>

This loud, bright, harsh world is too much. She pours the antidote in the trash can. _They're just tricks to keep me from getting healthy_.

Time speeds up and then slows down.

She's in the basement, but at the same time she's not. She watches herself tie up her family, watches in silent agony as she unchains the demon and retreats to the shadows beneath the stairs. She presses back into the corner, her mind whirring and blurring – _nonononono_ – and sinks down to the floor. Joyce presses in close, wide-eyed and worried.

"Buffy?"

Buffy shakes her head and squeezes her eyes shut. It's too much, it's all too much, and her world is expanding and contracting and exploding –

_Iellig-nín, another mind whispers, and her world falls silent but for that voice and the wind lilting through the trees._

_Wind in the trees. Not warmth, but knowing. The woods are golden and everything is quiet._

_What do you fear, my daughter? _

_The woods ripple and crack, shuddering and rearranging infinitesimally like moving water over shattered glass._

_Nana, she whimpers. Please, ni quorya!_

_Her mother presses one long-fingered hand to her brow, and with the other tilts her chin so they are staring deeply into each other's eyes. She cannot look away. _

_You will not drown, child, she speaks not with her mouth but with her mind, if only you remember your strength._

* * *

><p>"Be strong, baby," Joyce pleads.<p>

* * *

><p><em>It hurts<em>, _she tries to say._

_It must, her mother says. All wounds hurt as they heal. A daughter of the Galadhrim has the strength to bear it. You _will_ heal._

_Her voice is firm, as is her stance as she straightens to her full, indomitable height. Her hair is a golden beacon against the uncertain night as she raises one hand in farewell. _

_N'i lû tôl, my daughter. We shall meet again._

* * *

><p>Joyce's face goes slack with horror as everything that is Buffy slips away and an empty shell falls back against the cold, gray wall.<p>

* * *

><p>She awakens with a gasp. She is the Slayer, she is Buffy Summers, she is not-dead and it still hurts, but there is a beacon fire lit beneath her breast as a vision of golden hair against rough bark rustles and gently fades at the edges of her memory.<p>

She blinks back tears and feels sick with betrayal. She looks for accusation in the faces of her family, but finds only exhaustion and shame. It hurts. They are all hurting. She breathes deeply, fanning the tiny flame in her chest. 

They are healing, but they haven't reached bottom yet.


	5. Red

****_Because __Season 6 is utterly depressing and miserable._

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><p><strong>She hits the side of the tub hard and his hands are everywhere; on her leg, under her robe –<strong>

–_reaching for her neck, sharp nails digging into pale flesh. She struggles and gasps as the grip tightens, crushing her windpipe so she can barely breathe. She can feel hot blood trickling down her face, obscuring her vision as her arms are twisted cruelly behind her back._

**"No, stop!" she whimpers, crawling across the floor on her belly, his weight pressing down on her, forcing –**

– _her head up. The pressure on her throat slackens and she chokes in a lungful of foul air. The scent of blood is sharp in her nose._

"_Please," she whispers. "Please!"_

**She's crying now as she struggles harder and there is a roaring in her ears –**

– _and she doesn't see the blow coming that knocks her sideways to the ground. Another kick to her ribs leaves her gasping in the dust. Her side throbs and her head is ringing. The smell is worse here, and she vomits blood._

_ "Get 'er up!" a voice roars above her. "We need 'er alive!"_

_ She is pulled roughly to her knees, held steady in a painful grip. _

"_Get up, you filth," the voice sneers. "Look at me when I'm talking yous, bitch!"_

"_It doesn't have to be painful," another voice croons, rank breath hot and moist in her ear. "Jus' tell us what we wants to know and this will all be over. Jus' tell us what we wants to know."_

_Nails scrape down her cheek and there are hands all over her, ripping cloth and prodding flesh. A heavy weight presses down on her stomach, and then moves lower._

_She lashes out, kicking upwards. The weight falls away with a grunt. She kicks again, but they wrestle her to the ground. Her bound arms twist painfully beneath her. She shakes her head back and forth, no, please, don't! _

"_Daro!" she screams. "Daro!"_

**She stands shakily, holding her robe closed with trembling fingers. Her eyes are hot with shame and fear. _"Ask me again why I could never love you."_**


	6. Clear

They stand loosely grouped together in the bright midday sun. The dust of their victory clings yet to the air, hovering; a eulogy.

In the arid desert heat, Buffy stares down into the gaping maw where Sunnydale once stood. She stands beneath clear skies and tries to remember the heavy taste of grave dirt in her mouth, the wet pressure in her chest and throat, the taste of ash and electricity and the whole world falling apart.

But it is gone.

The skin on her palm is smooth and pink, and a double vision flickers at the edge of the void; a golden haze of dappled light that shifts and breaks in swells of distant melody. The fire in her blood has cooled, and the blazing beacon in her breast has surged and steadied. At the edge of the still-crumbling abyss, Buffy's feet stand firm. Her eyes are bright. Her mind is clear.

Her headstone is miles deep already.

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><p><em>next up is <span>The Gulls<span>  
><em>


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